When vegetation is cut and windrowed for hay purposes, the initially cut vegetation is heavy because of its moisture content and falls back upon the ground within the stubble remaining as a result of the vegetation cutting operation. Accordingly, the under part of the windrow often rests upon the ground and full drying thereof is extensively delayed. Further, rainfall intermediate the windrowing operation and a hay baling or other hay collecting operation can result in mildew forming on the underside of the windrowed hay. Still further, even though windrowed hay may not have started to mildew, incomplete drying of the lower portion of a windrow of hay can result in that hay becoming mildewed after it is baled.
Accordingly, a need exists for structure by which complete drying of windrowed hay may be accelerated to thereby substantially eliminate any possibility of the hay becoming mildewed before or after baling.
Although various types of hay tedders and other similar types of devices heretofore have been provided to facilitate the complete drying of hay while it lies upon the ground, most of these previously known devices involve rotary tine equipped structures which have at least some tendency to throw, flip or rake the partially dried hay in a manner which tends to break up the initial windrow and to cause partially dried leaves and seeds of the vegetation to fall therefrom. This, of course, not only causes difficulty in picking up the windrow from the ground during a baling operation but also creates additional waste in that many of the partially dried leaves and seeds are separated from the stalks of the hay and thus are lost during the pickup and hay baling operations. Various forms of hay handling devices as well as other mechanisms including some of the general structural and operational features of the instant invention are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,059,403, 3,364,667, 3,474,601, 3,721,080 and 3,731,468.